


wanna travel through life next to you

by atlas_oulast



Series: Thalia McCarthy Fics [4]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Dorks in Love, F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Past Abuse, Wedding Planning, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-10 10:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18658693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlas_oulast/pseuds/atlas_oulast
Summary: Snapshots of events leading up to Thalia & Brooke’s wedding... and the wedding itself.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> for anyone who’s interested in the pairing, me & my friend lilac came up with it, and it’s called ikea lesbians OR snickerdoodles (ikea lesbians because thalia’s Signature Colour is blue and brooke’s is yellow... get it. and snickerdoodles because food name ship name. and it’s cute.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brooke’s got a lil surprise for thalia

It was just an ordinary day in October, and Thalia and Brooke were going out to dinner.

There had been an odd little glint in Christine and Jeremy’s eyes as they dropped Olive off at their house, and Thalia asked what was going on and what was up with Jeremy’s little grin.

“Nothing,” he said with a smile.

After that, they went to dinner, a nice little Greek place, a little fancy but not too much. Brooke seemed a little on edge, and accidentally dropped the pepper shaker, nearly breaking it.

“Brooke, what’s up? Why... you’re more coordinated than this,” Thalia asked, confused.

“Oh, nothing, guess I’m a little elephant-like today,” Brooke said, brushing it off.

She tried to forget about it, and ordered and ate normally, but the feeling of something being off wouldn’t go away.

“Brooke?”

And then Brooke was fumbling around in coat, and then she dropped something on the floor, and almost fell off her chair.

“Oh, here, I’ll get it, don’t bother getting up” Thalia said, getting up.

“No, no, I’ve got it!” Brooke practically screeched, falling over herself to pick up whatever she’d dropped. She rested there on the floor, behind her chair, and Thalia heard her whispering to herself.

“Brooke? You okay down there?” Thalia leaned over to try and catch a glimpse of her, squatted down on the floor behind her chair.

“Yeah, yep! Totally fine, one sec, Lia!” Brooke squeaked.

Thalia waited, and sure enough, a moment later Brooke had stood back up, but then with one arm she took Thalia’s hand and motioned for her to stand up, which she did, utterly confused.

“Brooke, what’s going on?”

Brooke knelt down on the floor, still holding Thalia’s hand... and oh shit she was on one knee.

Thalia started crying right then and there, because now she knew what was coming and she had never loved a person so much in her goddamned life.

Brooke’s eyes were shimmering with tears as well, which she quickly wiped away with the heel of her hand.

“Fuck, I had this whole speech prepared in my head, and now I’ve forgotten the whole thing, but listen, Thalia, I love you, I don’t want to spend my life with anyone else, please... please be my wife?” She took out a small box from her pocket - so that’s what she’d dropped, and opened it up. A simple, silver band was in there, with five tiny diamonds on it, and Thalia loved it.

“Did you even think I’d ever say no?” Thalia exclaimed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She didn’t take the ring or ring box, just got on her knees (both of them) and hugged Brooke close.

A waitress and two tables full of people (it was a little early for dinner, the restaurant would be stuffed with people in an hour) exploded into applause, and Thalia cried happy sobs into Brooke’s neck, and then Brooke kissed the top of her head and if this wasn’t the best proposal ever Thalia didn’t know what was.

They broke away eventually, Brooke pecking the shorter girl on the lips quickly before offering her the ring.

It was slid on her finger, and Thalia kissed her for real now, cupping her head with one hand and hugging her tight with the other. Brooke kissed back instantly, but eventually, Thalia broke off first, since they were in public, after all.

“Sorry, go back to your meals now,” Thalia said to the people staring.

People laughed, and the two girls climbed back up to their seats, finishing off their cold meals.

“Ready for your check?” The waitress asked.

“Yes. Thanks for not kicking us out,” Brooke said, while Thalia stared at the table and blushed.

“Oh no, you’re fine. Congratulations, by the way.”

They paid, and Brooke proposed they go on a walk before going to go pick up Olive. They had time, she said.

The two walked, hand in hand, through the town, and Thalia couldn’t help but look into Brooke’s perfect, sparkling green eyes every five seconds, because goddamn she loved her so, so much.

“I love you. I love you,” she kept repeating.

“I love you too, Lia.”

By the time they actually went back to their car, it was dark outside, but Jeremy and Christine didn’t seem to mind that they’d had to take care of Olive for so long.

“Brooke told us what she was doing, and Olive was well behaved as always. Did her homework before saying more than five words to us, we had pizza, watched a movie,” Christine said. “We’re watching Gilmore Girls right now, I don’t think Olive will leave until the episode is over, apparently this is her favourite episode.”

“It’s the one where they have the dance marathon!” Olive shouted from the living room.

“Hello to you, too, Olive, dear!” Thalia shouted back, but she couldn’t make her voice sound angry at all.

“We’ll come watch the rest of the episode, I don’t think we have anywhere else to be,” Brooke said, laughing, stepping into the threshold.

“I take it it went well?” Jeremy asked, raising an eyebrow and grinning at Thalia’s utterly love struck smile.

“It did,” Thalia said, still grinning.

“Shush, it’s almost the best part,” Olive piped up.

Thalia sat down primly on the edge of the couch, and Brooke down sat on the rug next to her partner’s- _fiancée’s_ \- feet.

The episode ended fairly quickly, and they stood up to leave while Olive ran to the dining room table to grab her completed homework.

“Thank you for keeping an eye on her,” Thalia said, still smiling so hard that her cheeks hurt. She just had to tightly hug Jeremy for a moment, eyes shining, and then Christine.

She was feeling sappy, she’d just gotten engaged, who could blame her?

They drove home, and Olive went to go get ready for bed and set out her clothes for the next day, since it was only Thursday and school was still a thing. Olive was almost ten years old, in the fifth grade, and goddamn it felt like only yesterday when Thalia would wake up to her screeching and crying.

“I love you,” Thalia said for the seventy fifth thousand time that night.

Brooke just kissed her.


	2. two

“I guess we gotta start planning a wedding, huh, Brooke?” Thalia asked.

It’d been a week after they’d gotten engaged, and Thalia was enjoying every second of it, but... weddings were the next step.

“Yeah, probably. Bridal party, venue and shit, dress and theme and colours and-“

“We’ll get to all that. Maybe let’s choose colours first?” Thalia asked, cutting Brooke off before she listed off eight million things.

“Yeah, and then base everything around those. Oh, and what time of year we get married should influence the colours.”

“I’ll get my laptop, let’s go sit on the couch and have a good discussion about this,” Thalia said.

“I’ll get mine, and a notebook.”

They parted ways, collecting what they’d need, and met again in the living room, which had been decorated by Thalia’s careful artistic eye when they had moved in together, two years ago, back when they were both only twenty four and Olive only seven.

“Okay. So. When do we wanna do this?” Thalia asked, sitting back on the couch, a coral pink number that they’d rescued from a yard sale and completely reupholstered to the current colour. 

Brooke sat down next to her, opening up her laptop and pulling up her calendar. “What about a spring wedding? That could be fun, and then it won’t be ninety degrees like it would be if we did it, in say, June.”

“Yeah, like, in April?”

“April would be great. Mid-April, probably, it’s warm but not too warm then.”

“I don’t have anything going on in April, I think the only thing we’ve got is that big PTA meeting at Olive’s school on April second that everyone’s required to attend.”

“Yeah, so, maybe, Saturday the seventeenth?”

“Let’s make sure that everyone we know we’ll absolutely want at the wedding would be free then, but otherwise, that works,” Thalia said.

So Brooke called Jenna, Thalia called Jeremy (and by extension also got an answer from Christine) and then Brooke called one of her co-workers (she worked as a nurse) and Thalia called Michael, then they called a few other people.

“So everyone can come?”

“Yeah. Nobody said no.”

“April seventeenth it is!”

“That was relatively easy.”

Next, they chose colours, and that had the potential to also be a relatively easy task, but Thalia was an artist, so she scrutinised the exact colours, and wouldn’t settle for just a regular old shade of the colours, saying that this shade of blue wasn’t good enough, but loving the shade that was literally almost almost the same thing but slightly, unnoticeably lighter.

To everyone but Thalia, that was.

They settled on ice blue, lavender, grey, and pale pink, and got to work next on the bridal party, because in order to think about bridesmaids dresses they had to know who’d be wearing them.

“Christine, definitely, and my cousin Mahalia,” Thalia said, and Brooke nodded.

“Jenna, too, and Olive can be the flower girl, or a regular bridesmaid if she wants, and then Lindie-“ Brooke was referring to her coworker that she’d called to make sure the date would work, “And that’s probably all we need.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Do we need a maid of honour, or should they all be regular bridesmaids?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Maid of honour has to make a speech at the reception, I think, help with wedding planning, helps the bride get dressed for the wedding, and she’s the head, the leader, of the bridesmaids.”

“Christine could do that, but I don’t think it’s a necessary thing..”

“Hold on,” Brooke said, clearly googling up the duties for maid of honour. “Okay, yeah, I was right, but maid of honour also also helps plan a bachelorette party and wedding shower.”

“Do we need either of those things? I mean, a bachelorette party could be fun, only we’re both girls and share the same friends so it might end up being just a pre wedding girls party, but I don’t think I need a wedding shower..”

“You’re right, wedding showers are kinda weird if you’re getting presents at the wedding anyway. So no wedding shower, but bachelorette party- maybe. And maid of honour?” Brooke scribbled down notes in her notebook while speaking.

“Yeah, I think a maid of honour would be nice to have, at least, and I personally think Christine is the best choice for that, or maybe, potentially, Mahalia.”

“Agreed, I don’t have any siblings or cousins to prioritise, and I’m closest personally to Christine. I don’t really know Mahalia all that well, and if she’s supposed to be my go-to person, my right hand lady..”

“Okay, that makes sense. Plus, I think Mahalia is trying to move to Maine right now, so she probably can’t deal with the responsibility of a maid of honour.”

“Christine it is, then, unless she says no, in which case, it’s likely gonna be Jenna or Lindie.”

“Let’s call her back,” Thalia suggested.

Christine, as it turned out, was more than happy to be maid of honour.

“Of course I’ll do it! It’ll be fun, and I have enough time between now and April to plan things out,” Christine said. “I can start helping right now, if you want, I don’t need to finish what I’m doing right this second.” Christine was a published author, and also was a substitute teacher of English to third graders.

“We’re hanging out in the living room, come on over. It’d probably be good to have a third opinion right now, anyway.”

“I’ll be right over!”

“Cool, see you in a bit!” Brooke said, hanging up.

“Alright then, that’s bridal party taken care of,” Thalia said.

“Hold on, lemme write down the bridesmaids,” Brooke said, scribbling quickly into her notebook. “Christine, maid of honour, Olive, flower girl slash bridesmaid, Mahalia and Lindie and Jenna, bridesmaids.”

“Do we need a best man? Since you’ll get Christine as your right hand lady, it makes sense for me to have, say, Jeremy as my best man.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. And I wouldn’t expect anyone other than Jeremy to be your best man.”

“However, I don’t think we know enough other dudes for groomsmen... well... actually I don’t know what would be a good substitute for that, but anyway, we don’t know enough other guys, at least not well enough for that, but I don’t think we need other... other groomsmen.”

“Agreed. Also, um, bridesmen? Bridegroomen? Wow, there really isn’t a good other word for that,” Brooke laughed.

“Yeah. But let’s make sure Jeremy is okay with being best man, and then that’s our entire wedding party, pretty much, except also your parents.”

“Oh, shit, they haven’t spoken civilly since they got divorced when I was fourteen, will they..”

“Your dad gives you away, mom sits away from him, binga badda boom, and just tell them not to cause a scene. It’s their daughter’s wedding, if they’re decent people they’ll restrain themselves.”

“You’re right.”

“Okay, calling Jeremy, then let’s talk... venue or something. I dunno.” Thalia dialled Jeremy quickly, and he agreed to be her best man just as quickly.

“Alright, he says yes,” Thalia said, tossing her phone back down onto the couch. “Venue?”

“Or dresses.”

But then, they heard the door being unlocked, and there was Christine, walking into their living room, holding two packages of cupcakes. “We went to a birthday party yesterday and got sent home with, like, five boxes of these, so by extension you guys are getting some.”

“Thanks, Chris!” Thalia said, getting up to take them from her and put them on the counter. “I have no godly idea how we’ll manage to go through all of these before they go bad, but we’ll do our best.”

“Do your best? You’ve got a nine year old in this house, they’ll be gone by this time next week,” Christine joked.

So Christine pulled up a bean bag chair to face Thalia and Brooke, pulling out and opening out her own laptop. “Okay, so if I’m the maid of honour, I need to know about who the other bridesmaids are.”

“Alright,” Brooke said, cracking her knuckles. “So, Olive is the flower girl or she might be a regular bridesmaid, whichever she wants, and the other bridesmaids are Jenna, Thalia’s cousin Mahalia, and Lindie, my coworker.”

“Awesome.”

“That’s all pending, because we’ve got to call everyone and make sure they want to, but we’re pretty confident that that’ll be the bridal party,” Thalia added.

“Oh, let’s go ahead and call them now, and we can add them to a Facebook group together if they say yes, so everyone’s in one place,” Brooke said, picking up he phone.

So, ten minutes, three calls, and three yeses later, Christine set up a Facebook group with all the bridesmaids in it (minus Olive) and also obtained their email addresses and phone numbers from Thalia and Brooke.

For the rest of the afternoon, weddings were all that were talked of, from venues to potential dresses (though on the subject of dresses, it was decided that they’d make an afternoon or two out of dress shopping, grab lunch beforehand and talk about styles and shit) to flowers and so much more.

“There are so, so many aspects to weddings, and I guess you don’t really realise it until you try and plan one,” Thalia said.

“Amen to that,” Christine said, putting on a dramatically weary voice.

“We’ve got groundwork and a fair amount done. Colours, flowers, people, a list of venues to visit, et cetera, et cetera.”

“And I probably ought to get going, Jeremy and I are going to go see a movie once he gets home, and he’s going to be home fairly soon,” Christine said.

“Thanks for the help and cupcakes, Christine, you’re a lifesaver,” Thalia said.

“No problem. Call me whenever if you want to go dress shopping.”

“No, remember, we will set a date for that, because we have to know when Mahalia can drive down, we will not do this out of the blue,” Brooke said in a joking tone, but the information was serious.

“I know, I know. See you guys soon!” And then she was gone, Thalia got up to go make herself a sandwich, and things returned to normal-ish for the rest of the day.

 


	3. three

On a Saturday four weeks later, Thalia, Brooke, and Olive went out in the car, visiting venue after venue for the wedding.

From things as simple as large pavilions in parks to whole five room indoor venues, they went through one after the other after the other, and except for a few, every single place seemed to have some sort of issue.

For reasons as mundane as the venues not allowing music (who does that? As a wedding venue?) to things as big as the fact that it was going under renovations and might not be done in time, and it was exhausting.

When Olive started getting really antsy, they went out to lunch at Moes, munching down burritos and talking about the places they’d been to.

“I liked the pavilion at Harold Walker Park, it was big enough and everything seemed like it’d work there, and it’s relatively cheap,” Brooke said.

“I liked that one too, but I kinda want, like, a long aisle to walk down, if that makes sense? I just like the idea of taking forever to get to the altar thingy madoodle,” Thalia said. “And that pavilion wouldn’t allow for that. Unless...”

“What’re you thinking, Thalia?”

“What if we wove the aisle around and through the seats? So it’d have lots of hairpin turns, everyone would feel close to the action, done.”

“That’s... that’s actually a really good idea. I like that,” Brooke said.

“That sounds fun, Mom,” Olive agreed.

“We still have a few more places to look at, but I think that place is my favourite so far anyway, we’ll look at the last few but my bet is on the pavilion. And that place isn’t making us drop ten grand to rent it for the day.”

“My one issue with the aisle going through the seats like that, we’d need to clearly mark the aisle.”

“What if... what about, we buy a bunch of remote control tea candles, have the wedding at night, and line the aisle with tea candles?”

“That sounds really, really pretty.”

“And we turn them on, one by one, since we’d have to buy a whole bunch of candles, like, as the first people are waking down the aisle. Not one by one like each individual candle, but set by set, so we’d have to make sure they didn’t get mixed up, but..”

“That’s genius. Absolute genius. Olive, your mom is a genius,” Brooke said.

“Yeah yeah, I know,” Olive said, eyes not leaving her chips as she dipped one daintily into her salsa cup and then popped it in her mouth.

Thalia laughed. “But... if we do it at night for that, what if we hung up fairy lights on the ceilings? You’re dad has a stepladder, and they said we could hang shit, plus we were going to hang up cloth things between the columns anyway.”

“I’m so glad I decided to marry you,” Brooke said, leaning over the table to kiss her on the forehead.

“Ew, get a room!” Olive squealed, and both Brooke and Thalia laughed.

“Well, Olive, any input on these ideas?” Thalia asked, taking a bite of burrito.

“Tea candles and stuff sound cool, and to turn on all the candles while you walk down the aisle, me and Christine and Jenna and Aunt Mahalia and Lindie can turn on all the remotes, if we number the remotes first, and number all the candles on the bottom while setting them up.”

“Yeah, and then Christine can walk down the aisle, and everyone else, and then Olive can do flower petals for Brooke. So I - visually, at least, turn on the lights as I walk by, Brooke gets to walk on the flowers.”

“I love it,” Brooke said. “I absolutely love it.”

“Downside is, that means we’re buying eight million bajillion tea candles.”

“Oh, well. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

The rest of the venues they looked at all had the one thing wrong with each one, and Thalia at that point had her heart set on that pavilion, so it was clear, the pavilion it was. Thalia applied for the reservation the very next day.

“See, planning weddings isn’t so hard, we got the venue knocked out in a day, not counting the time we spent finding them in the first place. And as an added bonus, it’s ten minutes from Christine and Jeremy’s place,” Thalia said.

“I’ll bet something will be an issue. Don’t count your chickens before they catch, Thalia.” Brooke kissed her hand sweetly.

 


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the dress shopping experience

“Get up get up get up get up get up get up!”

That was what Brooke and Thalia woke up to one Sunday in January, the weekend before Olive’s tenth birthday.

So if it wasn’t her birthday, what was it?

Well, Olive grabbed Thalia’s shoulder and shook her roughly. “C’mon, Mom, it’s dress shopping day!” 

Ah, yes. Dress shopping, wonderful. And also brunch beforehand with all the bridesmaids. But mostly dress shopping.

“Olive, dear, what time is it?” Thalia groaned.

“Eight in the morning.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Thalia conceded. She’d been positive that it wasn’t any later than six, but whatever. Brunch was at ten, it was probably a good idea to get up now.

Thalia first showered, washed her hair, and blew it dry while Brooke showered herself. She still had her now classic blue pixie cut, so she didn’t have much drying to do before she went out to the closet and picked up clothes that were weather appropriate, comfortable, and easy to slip on and off, because she’d be trying on suits that day, today.

She ended up with a long, flowy, white long sleeved t-shirt, her grey cardigan with the roses, and black leggings, and and her black boots. No jewellery other than her engagement ring.

Brooke, who’d be trying on the big white dresses, wore a blue shirt and a long grey skirt, pulling her hair up into a high ponytail, and minimal makeup. Thalia didn’t wear any makeup, that’s just not what she did.

“Mom? Can I wear my orange dress?” Olive called from her bedroom, down the hall.

“No, wear jeans and a shirt, nothing overly fancy.”

“But we’re trying on fancy dresses!”

“Exactly!” 

“Oh, fine.” Olive’s door shut again, and Thalia put on her deodorant while Brooke went through her earring collection.

“Brooke, babe, you don’t need earrings.” 

“I just wanna see what I’ll look like with the earrings I’m gonna wear at the wedding. The ones my grandma left me in her will. Goddamn, where _are_ they?!” 

After almost tearing apart the master bedroom, they found the earrings in one of the drawers in the bathroom, obscured partially by Brooke’s circular brush.

They were nice earrings, diamond studs with a hypoallergenic.... 

“What do they call the stick part of earrings, the part that goes in your ear, Brookie?”

“I don’t know,” Brooke said.

Well, whatever they were, they were hypoallergenic, and Thalia knew that because she’d had a nasty ear infection after getting her ears pierced at age nineteen and putting in earrings with nickel in them as soon as she was allowed to change them.

Brooke had lent her the earrings for a cocktail party she was invited to for whatever reason (the hostess was apparently Jenna’s cousins’ best friend’s sister’s sister, but still) and no ear oozing!

“Olive, are you dressed?” Thalia called. 

“Almost! I’m getting my shoes on.” A pause. “I’m dressed now!” 

Thalia heard Olive’s door flung open and the knob hitting the wall in the bedroom, and then Olive bounced back in, wearing a kelly green shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Her fairly long brown hair was done in one braid down her back, and she was wearing a flower crown she’d gotten from her best friend’s birthday party back in September.

“That flower crown might need to be left in the car at the bridal shop,” Thalia warned.

“Whatever.” 

They drove off to the restaurant half an hour later, and it was a good fifteen minutes there, so they arrived at nine fifty five, and people were already standing outside waiting. Just Christine and Lindie, but Mahalia drove up just as they were getting out. 

“Aunt Mahalia!” Olive cried, bolting over to hug her tight.

“Hi, Olive!” Mahalia said, hugging back and smiling. 

“Thank you for coming, Mahalia,” Thalia said when the two walked up to the front of the restaurant to where everyone else was. 

“Anything for my favourite cousin. And Brooke, nice to see you again.”

It was only a few more minutes before Jenna drove into the parking lot, and then Brooke’s mother and aunt were only a few minutes behind, and then everyone filed in and were seated fairly quickly, since Lindie had put in the name for the table.

After everyone had introduced themselves to everyone and ordered, Thalia and Brooke broke out their phones.

“So, we’ve got an appointment at David’s Bridal at noon with a consultant, and for those dresses, I think we’re going for something with a knee high skirt, halter top, and the maid of honour will go in ice blue, but everyone else in lavender. This has been discussed amongst bridesmaids before, as far as I know, so this is mostly the refresher and also for the benefit of you, mom, and Aunt Beth,” Brooke explained.

“Gotcha,” the aforementioned aunt said, and Brooke’s mother nodded.

“So whatever we get has to come in both shades.” 

“What about shoes?”

“Those aren’t being regulated, just something you feel like you can dance around in for a few hours. Fancy sandals, ballet flats, high heels if you’re feeling adventurous,” Thalia said.

“And we’re going dress shopping for Brooke right after, correct?” Jenna asked.

“Yeah, we have another appointment at three thirty, it’s at a different bridal store, but they’re right across the street from each other,” Thalia said. “Now, Brooke won’t let me come see the dress when she buys it, so I’ll be off actually getting my own wedding outfit, my suit, at an entirely _different_ store down the street, anyone who’d rather do that can come with me.” 

Mahalia laughed. “I’ll come with you, Thalia, but I don’t think anyone else will. Not even Olive.”

“Well, let’s think about this,” Thalia said with a grin. “Christine is the maid of honour, she _has_ to go, Jenna’s also one of Brooke’s closest friends, so she’s going, Brooke’s aunt and mom are going for obvious reasons, Lindie is another one of Brooke’s best friends and Brooke knows her better than I do, so all that leaves is Olive.” Thalia was laughing at this point, as was everyone else. “Olive, my dear daughter, would you rather go with Brooke or with me?”

“Brooke,” Olive said, and if nobody had been laughing before now, they all were after that.

“Oh, I might pop down the street to see you if it gets too boring over in floofy dress land, I would probably be more useful helping you buy a suit anyway, since I actually wear suits from time to time.”

“Come join the suits side, Jenna,” Mahalia whispered conspiratorially, and Jenna laughed.

“Maybe I will.”

Brunch flew by pretty quickly, and people decided to carpool to save some gas and come back to their cars. Thalia, Brooke, Olive, and Mahalia all squeezed into Christine’s tiny Prius, since it had better gas mileage. Olive proudly inhabiting the front seat.

Brooke’s mother and aunt went with Jenna, and they all drove over to the David’s Bridal, nobody got stuck in traffic, and everyone arrived in one piece.

The consultant, a fairly young looking woman who introduced herself as Clara, was fairly nice, listened to what they had in mind for bridesmaid dresses, took everyone’s measurements, and came back with a few different dresses.

Since the bridesmaids would have to all wear the same thing and _they_ would be wearing it, they did have a say in the matters. So Jenna didn’t like one dress that had a wide skirt (and Brooke agreed on that one for extra points) and Christine didn’t like one where the halter was lace, and so on and so forth.

Olive had a say as well, but slightly less of a say, since they had to get her a child’s dress and it could end up being very similar to what the adult bridesmaids were wearing, or very different.  

While Jenna, Mahalia, Christine and Lindie were in the dressing rooms, the consultant took time to try and find Olive a dress, and a dress that everyone liked was found for her quickly enough, a pale pink number, a longer high skirt, tank top stype sleeves and none of the halter top nonsense.

It took the adults a little longer, since it has to be agreed upon by four people and not just one, but they did find one that everyone liked, that came in ice blue for Christine and lavender for everyone else, and the dresses were ordered, measurements taken a second time, and the needed tailorings written down before the order was sent out. 

They had a fair amount of time to kill before the appointment for Brooke’s dress, so they went and got milkshakes from the Cookout down the road, conveniently located across the street from the place where Thalia would hopefully be getting her suit, if she found one she liked well enough.

Milkshakes were finished, and they all split up. Olive, Brooke’s mom and aunt, Lindie, and Christine all went with Brooke to the appointment for the bridal gown, and Mahalia, Jenna, and Thalia went to go find a suit.

Suit shopping is a lot easier than dress shopping because there’s only so many different styles, Thalia had a pretty good idea of what she wanted, and Jenna knew her stuff when it came to suits. So a suit was found quickly, measurements were taken for alterations, and they were done only after forty five minutes.

According to Christine, whom Thalia texted, they were not anywhere close to being done with Brooke’s dress, so the three members of the Suit Squad decided to go ahead and knock out ordering flowers, which Thalia had planned to do weekend after next, but as long as they were over in wedding land, why not?

Another half hour and flowers had been ordered. They’d chosen peonies, daisies, and tulips as their main flowers, of course they had to figure out exact colours but it wasn’t a difficult or extremely time consuming task.

Brooke still wasn’t done, and according to Christine they didn’t know when they’d be done, so Thalia turned to Mahalia and Jenna with a rueful smile. 

“Want to just go to a coffee shop or a Panera Bread and just wait it out? Or you guys can go join them.”

“I’m not leaving you all on your lonesome, Thalia,” Mahalia said, leaning down to pat her head.  

“I’ll stay, Mahalia is cool. Thalia on the other hand..” Jenna joked, and the other two laughed.

They found a Panera Bread two miles away, drove there, and parked themselves at a booth. Mahalia got a drink and Jenna a bagel, Thalia didn’t bother getting anything and took out her laptop, glad she’d had the foresight to bring it.

“I can do some work from here off their WiFi, but I’ll still be conversational,” Thalia said. 

Mahalia, who’d brought her backpack and purse from her own car just in case, went to get out her own laptop, saying that she should also get some work done. Jenna had her fancy ass phone, and said she’d be fine with that.

There was some small talk, but for the next hour and a half, they mostly just did work, or fooled around on the Internet, until Thalia’s phone buzzed at a quarter to six. 

 **Christine** : Brooke found a dress that she instantly fell in love with, we are almost all finished up, where are you?

 **Me** : Panera Bread, we probably ought to get dinner at this point.

 **Christine** : Meet up at Charles’ Seafood Grille?

 Charles’ Seafood Grill was a nice-ish, fairly cheap seafood restaurant right down the road, and Thalia ran it by Mahalia and Jenna, who gave the okay.

 **Me** : Sure

So laptops were put away, and the trio drove the two minutes to the seafood restaurant where Brooke, Christine, and the others were already waiting. 

“Only took her almost three hours to find her dream dress!” Brokke’s aunt joked in greeting. 

“Sorry I took forever, Lia,” Brooke said, pecking her on the cheek in greeting. “We went through dress after dress after dress-“

“And then that poor consultant pulls out this dress and Brooke instantly goes ‘that’s the one!’” Christine added.

“Hey, it’s the most expensive dress I will ever buy in my entire life, and the dress I chose was fucking perfect, so I think it paid off,” Brooke responded indignantly.

Dinner was a fairly social event, but the people who’d been with Brooke buying the wedding dress were fairly tight lipped about it, even Olive wouldn’t say anything.

“My years of basically being a second parent to Olive have paid off, she knew better than to misbehave when she got bored,” Brooke said, when Thalia had inquired about Olive’s behaviour.

“She also played with Brooke’s phone for two hours when she started getting bored,” Christine said.

After dinner, they drove home, wallets a little lighter, but stomachs - and hearts- full. Mahalia was staying the night with Brooke, Thalia, and Olive, before driving back home in the morning, but she promised to be back on Saturday for Olive’s birthday.

Brooke and Thalia finally retired to bed around eleven, Olive had been in bed for awhile before that and Mahalia was at least settled in the guest bedroom, maybe not asleep, but she wasn’t required to be, either.

“Sorry again for taking so much time on picking a dress.” 

“Hey, if that’s what it takes for you to find your dream dress, I’m here for it. You’re gonna look beautiful at the wedding. Not that you don’t normally, but-“

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bridesmaid dresses (for jenna, lindie, & mahalia): https://www.fabmiss.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/600x800/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/7/2/72040-1.jpg
> 
> maid of honour dress (for christine, same as for regular bridesmaids but ice blue): https://www.fabmiss.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/600x800/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/7/2/72040-light-sky-blue.jpg
> 
> thalia’s fancy pants suit: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b2/b8/c1/b2b8c1a8bab19689a2c00b14dbeff1bd.jpg


	5. five

“We’re going to have to rehearse this wedding, Brooke,” Thalia said.

 It was two weeks until the wedding, and everything was mostly ready. Tea candles and other decorations had been bought, the catering was secure, everything was ready but the whole wedding procession.

 “Yeah, you’re right. So everyone’s knows what they’re doing, and...” 

“And we numbered and marked all the tea candles and put them in separate plastic containers and stuff, but we’ve got to figure out how the whole turning on of those will work.” 

“Exactly.”

So somehow, Thalia and Brooke found an evening where all the bridesmaids and Jeremy could come over, and Mahalia was even in town, visiting a some friends.

“We’ve got to figure out the setting up of the tea candles, and how they’ll be turned on when the time comes,” Thalia instructed everyone when they came.

“I thought the idea was to turn them on, set by set, as you walked by, Thalia,” Mahalia said.

 “It is, but there’s got to be some coordination on that, so that it’s not a scramble to figure it out on the day of.”

“So, we just set them out, and us bridesmaids can probably, like, sit behind the curtains and press the remotes as you walk by, it’s simple enough, but yeah, I see why you’d want this to be practiced,” said Jenna.

So everyone got on their hands and knees and set out five hundred tea candles around the living room, carefully setting out each set next to each other, so they could be turned on all yogeyher, in one big chunk rather than the individual ones turning on fifteen feet apartment from each other.

When everything was set up, the bridesmaids and Olive sat down on the couch and next to it on floor together, remotes spread out, organised by numbers that’d been written on them clearly, one to fifty.

“Now, you’ve just got to coordinate turning them on. Let’s put on our wedding song and I’ll walk between the rows, we can coordinate to that,” Thalia said.

The first run was... nothing short of chaos. The number thirty seven set was being turned on two seconds after the fourteenth set, and then the second set, and Thalia didn’t even bother going all the way around. 

The second round, after Christine had told everyone to grab remotes in a pattern, so Jenna would turn on number one, then Mahalia, Jeremy, Lindie, Christine, and Olive, then back to Jenna. It was slightly better, people were still grabbing remotes out of turn, but a little better.

They practiced six more rounds, and finally, everything seemed to turn on in a coordinated, simple manner as Thalia glided down the path, Jeremy at her side.

It’d been decided a long time ago that Jeremy would escort Thalia down the aisle, and it made sense, he was her best friend, and it wasn’t like her dad would be coming out of prison to walk her down. Not that she’d want him to, ever. 

Thalia, after that perfect run, suggested they run through it again, but with the overhead lights dimmed.

During the actual wedding, there would be fairy lights and some coloured floodlights so that people could actually see shit but still get the magical experience of the tea lights turning on, and there would also be several spotlights at the altar.

And this time, she also suggested they do it how they’d do it in real life, with Christine having to skip one or two of her final turns in order to get ready to walk down the aisle directly after Thalia and Jeremy had reached the front, and everyone walking down the ‘aisle,’ Olive even equipped with an Easter basket full of fake plastic grass. 

It was perfect. The lights went on when they were supposed to, and it really did feel like Thalia was turning on the lights magically as she walked by. Christine stood up before her second to last turn, leaving Olive to turn on two. Olive handled it well, and even better with the final turn. 

Everything went equally smoothly after that, Christine walking down, then Jenna, Mahalia, and Lindie, then Olive spread the Easter grass everywhere, only a few steps ahead of Brooke, on Jenna’s arm for now, but she’d be walking up with her father when the time actually came. 

They did it three times more, just to be sure that they had the coordination down, and each time seemed equally or even more perfect.

 “Alright, you came over for two hours to play with some candles in our living room, you can go now,” Brooke joked after that, which was met with laughter.

In reality, everyone helped them pick up the candles and put them back - into the correctly numbered boxes, too- and sat around talking for a bit before people began to leave.

Thalia pulled Jenna aside right as she and Lindie were leaving, and asked her a quick question. 

“What if I re dyed my hair, but like, to the wedding colour of blue. Would that work? You’ve probably got more experience with hair dying than I do.”

Jenna thought for a moment. “You will probably need to bleach it again, but it might work. I’ll keep an eye out for dyes.”

“You’re awesome.”

“Oh, I know, sweetheart.”

And a few days later, Jenna showed up out of the blue with hair bleach and a light blue dye that was pretty much the perfect shade. 

“Probably want to wait until a few days before the wedding before you actually dye it, but otherwise you ought to be good. And don’t you dare try and pay me back, Thalia, all I want in response is to get the honour of being allowed to dye your hair.”

“Thank you so, so much. Maybe we dye it the Wednesday before the wedding?”

“Ehh... it is your wedding. What about the Friday before?”

“I’m getting married on a Saturday.”

“Oh, I know. But you ought to look your best, with the freshest hair possible.”

”Friday it is then.”

”See you then.”


	6. six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> preparations on the day of the wedding, but that’s not all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: does 10k days
> 
> me: also procrastinates on adding 200 words to a chapter so i can post it

The day of the wedding.

...Holy shit.

Thalia managed to sleep alright the night before, but as soon as she woke up, she was up instantly.

She was up at seven forty five, and got dressed pretty quickly. Brushed her newly dyed hair, her teeth, and put on jeans and a t-shirt. The wedding wasn’t until six thirty at _night_ but they had to be at the pavilion at noon to set up.

The plan from there was to set everything up, be done setting up by two, grab a quick lunch, and all the girls would go to Christine and Jeremy’s house, which was just ten minutes away.

Everyone would get dressed and ready there, minus Brooke, who would get her hair and makeup done, but would put on her dress on site, just before the ceremony began.

They needed to be back by four, test the fairy lights, the spotlights by the altar, and rehearse with the tea lights several times, and people would probably start arriving at five.

The bridesmaids and the two brides would both converse with the guests as they arrived, and it was the special job of the bridesmaids to escort people to their seats.

Yeah, there was a bit of a seating chart, it hadn’t meant to happen but had happened.

They wanted their closest friends and family members right up at the front, and certain people at certain other places, and even though there were only thirty to forty people coming, an organised seating chart had been realised as necessary a few days ago and had been thrown together by Thalia and Christine.

Brooke got up fairly soon after Thalia, washing her hair and blowing it dry after her own shower. Her outfit was slightly nicer than Thalia’s, because she’d be talking to guests before getting into her wedding dress and figured that it wasn’t worth the trouble to bring a whole other outfit to wear for three hours.

She wore a white on blue polka dotted high low maxi skirt, a simple pink top, but also sneakers and her hair was thrown into a bun. 

They didn’t really need to be ready that early, but they were ready to go at eight, and still had three and a half hours to kill. 

“So... I guess we just kinda... I mean, the car is all loaded up and ready to go, we just need to have breakfast and stuff,” Brooke said. “But we have so much time..”

 “Let’s make some waffles and watch Gilmore Girls with Olive until it’s time to go,” Thalia suggested.

“I heard Gilmore Girls and my name!” Olive called from upstairs.

“Get dressed, we’re having waffles and a Gilmore Girls binge before we have to go set up,” Brooke called back.

“And remember, don’t put on your dress, just pants and a shirt!” Thalia added.

“I’ll be down in ten!”

Brooke got out the waffle iron and began making the waffles, while Thalia went into Netflix, found the episode they’d left off on, and then got plates, chocolate chips and some fruit and maple syrup out for toppings out.

Olive bounded down the stairs just a few minutes later, wearing a blue Pokemon shirt and jean capris, and sneakers with neon pink socks.

“I approve of your outfit, Olive,” Thalia said, ruffling her hair a bit.

 Olive grinned up at her, accepted a waffle from Brooke, and proceeded to dump eight pounds of chocolate chips and maple syrup on her waffle.

Whatever. Her mothers- Brooke would _officially_ be Olive’s mom, and that wouldn’t change much, since Olive wasn’t going to call her Mom like she did with Thalia, and Olive considered Brooke a parent anyway, but still. It’d be official now, and that filled Thalia’s heart full of love.

They sat on the floor around the coffee table, getting up only for glasses of juice or water or waffle refills, watching as many episodes as they could before the alarm that Thalia had set on her phone went off. 

Well, the alarm titled ‘Be ready to go by now!!’ The actual alarm for leaving wasn’t going to go off for another twenty minutes.

Exactly five minutes later, an alarm on Brooke’s phone went off, titled ‘We Had Better Be Ready To Go By Now.’ 

Thalia raised an eyebrow and giggled a bit.

The episode ended ten minutes later, and with the tiny bit of time left to kill before the time when they’d decided they were leaving, they washed, dried, and put away the dishes.

Like a family.

Thalia washed, Brooke dried, and Olive climbed up on the counters to put them away. 

It was a perfect little moment. An absolutely perfect little moment. 

And then they all piled into the car, technically Brooke’s car, which was the mighty minivan, as she called it, stuffed with shit that they needed to bring, some of it also tied down on one of those hitch shelves attached to the back.

They drove off, putting on a playlist that Christine had made one time on Thalia’s phone, full of both broadway bops and fun little pop songs, so they enjoyed all singing along to the songs as they drove that half hour to the park.

They were the first ones there, but Christine and Jeremy arrived less than two minutes after that, Brooke’s mom and aunt right on their heels, and then Mahalia, Mahalia’s older and younger sisters, Diwa and Dalisay, and Jeremy’s dad, Jenna, Lindie, and Lindie’s sister, Meredith, who was going to be the wedding photographer and had also volunteered to help set up at no extra cost. 

“Let’s put together a motherfucking wedding, bitches!” Thalia shouted, then turned to Olive. “Don’t let me catch you ever say those words until you’re sixteen.” 

Everyone was laughing, including Olive herself, who nodded and gave her mom a big thumbs up.

They unloaded everything onto the picnic tables under the pavilion (which would be moved out onto the grass for the duration of the ceremony and put back for the reception) and people were delegated with tasks.

For instance, Thalia and Brooke’s dad and Jeremy’s dad got up on stepladders and started hanging fairy lights, and Brooke and Christine started setting up chairs, and so on and so forth.

 The hanging of the fairy lights was the most strenuous and time consuming task. There were plenty of fairy lights, but they had to cover pretty much the entire ceiling, and that takes awhile, plus they had to make sure they’d be able to take them down at the end of the night, but still able to stay up on their own.

All this meant was a lot of masking tape up there. 

The chairs were all set up before the fairy lights were done, and the grill was ready to go, and the tent where Brooke would put on her dress was set up, and the veil-like fabric between the columns was hung, and two picnic tables were set with tablecloths and ready to be used for gifts, tablecloths were easily accessible for the other tables that needed to be brought back under the pavilion for the reception, the flower adorned altar was all set up, and all of the floral arrangements that could be put up now were up.

Hell, even the tea candles got set up, and the fairy lights still weren’t done.

When everything else was done, everyone began to help Thalia and the dads set up the damn fairy lights, and with extra hands, the task went quicker, and it was two ‘o clock on the dot when Thalia climbed down from the stepladder after mounting the final strings of fairy lights.

“Alright, time for the girls to go! Shoo, shoo, get out of here!” Brooke’s said jokingly, but he was right. The entire bridal party piled into Brooke’s minivan (fuck gas mileage when they were driving ten minutes) and Thalia drove them all to Christine’s house.

Most of the bridesmaids dresses were already at Christine’s house, except for Olive’s dress and Jenna’s, which had needed last minute alterations, but both were brought to Christine’s house in the minivan. 

They all got their hair and makeup done together at Jeremy and Christine's dining room table, which had been set up with big mirrors so that everyone could get ready in one place without tripping over each other in the master bathroom.  

Jenna personally seemed to have delegated herself as Thalia’s hairstylist, and did her hair relatively quickly, since it was just a matter of some quick combing and some pomade before she was ready.

Thalia wasn’t going to do makeup, that just wasn’t her, and she wasn’t going to be someone else on _her_ wedding day. _Her_ _wedding_ _day_. After months and months of planning, it was really now happening.

So Thalia was done first, but stuck around chatting with the bridesmaids as they did their makeup, until Jenna grabbed her suit from Christine’s closet where it’d hung with the bridesmaids dresses and Brooke’s dress for the past four weeks, but obviously, Thalia herself wasn’t allowed to fetch the suit, Jenna did it, so that Thalia wouldn’t get a glimpse of Brooke’s dress.

She changed in the guest room of the house, carefully checking it all for wrinkles. But none were seen. It fit perfectly, the pant legs flaring out just as they were supposed to at the bottoms, and the suit jacket perfectly fit her, snugly but not too tight.

Ah, the wonders of tailoring.

Under the suit jacket, she wore just a short sleeved dress shirt. Her days of panic attacks when she wore anything less than three layers of clothes were gone, and she had Brooke to thank for at least part of that achievement.

Her shoes were simple white flats with open toes, nothing too masculine or overly feminine. She wanted to enjoy her wedding, she wasn’t going to wear clown shoes or heels, either.

And then she looked at herself in the full length mirror mounted on the door, and stared.

Gone was the girl with the long, past the knee length brown hair she kept braided, that braid that was used by her father to yank her around.

Gone was the girl who wore hoodies and two long sleeved shirts and pants, all the time, every day, even when it was eighty or ninety degrees outside, the girl who stuck to herself, kept her head low, afraid that if she spoke up, she’d be slapped, because that’s what her dad had done to her since age four.

Now look at her. Short, extremely gay blue hair, a fucking suit, about to marry the love of her life, a blonde girl who loved her. Thalia, at age fifteen, would’ve scoffed sadly at this image, wouldn’t believe that she would come this far.

But she wasn’t going to cry. Save that for later, at the ceremony. Still, she allowed herself to be proud, took one last look in the mirror, and went back downstairs.

Most everyone else was almost done, Mahalia was touching up her eyeshadow and Jenna and Olive were both off getting dressed, and both soon returned, and then Mahalia went and dressed, and Lindie soon followed, and finally Christine finished with Brooke and went to go get dressed herself, and everyone piled up into the minivan again, back to the park.

Brooke had her hair done, two small braids from the front of her hair pulling her hair away from her face and tied in the back with a clear hairtie and a white ribbon, the rest of her thick blonde hair curled expertly by Christine, and her makeup was done, and honestly, Thalia wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen Brooke glowing like this, glowing with beauty and growing excitement, and she knew she’d be even prettier with her veil and dress on.

The second they hopped out of the car, everyone who’d been left to keep an eye on the pavilion hopped into cars, and the girls passed the time while everyone else was off getting dressed and guests weren’t arriving yet to practice with the tea lights exactly how things would go in the ceremony, Olive pretending to strew flowers from her currently empty basket.

Everyone who’d helped set up came back, all dressed, and guests were beginning to trickle in. Thalia and Brooke looked at each other from across the pavilion from time to time while they made small talk with this person and that person, and they saw the other looking positively beautiful, and smiled gently before returning their full attention to the person they were talking to.

Everything was going perfectly, and Thalia was about to get up to go have Jeremy help her put on her veil, when her phone buzzed.

It wasn’t a number she knew, but Thalia was well aware of her unhealthy amounts of paranoia, and besides, it was her wedding day, what if something important was happening? Also, it was her area code, so all in all she stepped away, out into the grass and answered.

”Hello?” She said.

”Is this Thalia Joyce McCarthy?”

”I am she, who is this?”

”I’m from Red Bank County Prison, your father, George D. McCarthy, would like to speak with you.”

 


End file.
